Daniela Cubelic is Victoria's "Queen of Tea" and inspirational leader and owner of Silk Road Tea. She has been a tireless supporter of local community based activities and a blazing entrepreneur in the process of re-inventing the Capital's manufacturing sector.

Dan Dagg is a communications, marketing and design guru leading the creative team at Hot House Marketing (owner). Dan has been instrumental in shaping Victoria's Economic Development initiatives as Chair of the GVDA and Executive member of the GVCC.

We were lucky to have both Daniela and Dan chat about the business and economic development prospects and solutions for our great Capital City!

It's the Social Media Camp podcast cross-over episode. Look for this episode on John, Paul and Mic, and the Social Media Camp podcast. Crazy, huh?

Paul talks to two folks who know a thing or two about politics and social media. One is current journalist, communications consultant, and former communications and campaign manager for British Columbia MLA Mary Polak, Todd Hauptman. The other is communications consultant and former social media coordinator for the British Columbia Liberal Party during the last provincial election, Allie Valiente.

How does social media fit into the context of a modern political campaign? What are the opportunities, and what are the pitfalls? Who should and should not incorporate social media heavily into their campaign strategy.

Andrew Reeve was a young candidate in the last municipal election in Victoria, finishing a very respectable 13th place in his first ever attempt. He is also currently serving as President of the Victoria Electoral District of the Liberal Party of Canada.

When we talk about housing policy in Greater Victoria (British Columbia, for all our non-Canadian friends), we usually mean homelessness. Fair enough. We can all agree homelessness is an important issue.

But what are the economic implications of high housing prices, both rental and ownership, for our region's "regular" workers - the middle class, the people that are here, and the smart people our region is trying to attract?

Governments in our region tell you they are addressing the issue. According to housing policy expert Shannon Renault, they really are not, and she explains why in this week's episode.

We begin the first show of the new season (that is, season 2) with the usual banter between Paul and John, and hit on a few topical political issues: the Alberta election, and the reliability of polls therein; the continuing dysfunction in Saanich Municipal politics; predictions for the Federal election; and more!

If you want to skip John and Paul's caffeine-fuelled nonsense, fast forward to about 15 minutes to get to the really good stuff.

Welcome back listeners.

Don't forget to overshare us on Facebook, follow us creepily on Twitter, and donate vast sums of money on Patreon.

This week we kick off with Paul's thoughts about the importance of reconciling civility and freedoms, in the wake of the Paris terror attacks, then lead into a conversation about the state of B.C.'s education system.

We were very excited to be joined by the Founder and Principal Educator at the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry, a B.C. post-secondary institution that's breaking the mould and attracting a lot of attention.

How do kids learn, what kids should learn, and where all of this is going?

If you haven't watched Jeff's TedX Victoria talk, check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O5PK6LsymM

During the talk, Jeff told us about an exciting event coming up in B.C., that will have both the BCTF and the Ministry of Education involved (collaboration, imagine that). Here's the announcement link: http://www.newsroom.gov.bc.ca/2015/01/education-forum-to-be-all-about-learning.html

Jeff is also a fan of the work of John Abbott, recommending the article "Battling for the Soul of Education", and the video "Born to Learn".

John Paul & Mic start 2015 right out of the gate and interview Adam Olsen, Interim Leader of the BC Provincial Green Party.

We ask the challenging questions, why are you wearing purple socks? Why is the left sock on the right foot? LOL...all kidding aside, the Provincial Green's appeared to end 2014 with good momentum...will it carry into 2015? And why? How will the Provincial Green Party handle Small Business interests?

We travel down a curious path with Lorraine Murphy (aka Raincoaster) of TheCryptosphere.com, covering such festive topics as hacking, hacktivism, Anonymous, "The Interview" and the Sony hack, North Korea, FBI hackers, privacy, and everything related.

If you're wondering why the audio is a bit off this week, it's because we recorded in space. Move over Chris Hadfield, the Space Station was ours this week! That's our story, anyway - and we're sticking to it.

Co-working. What is it? Where is it happening in Victoria? What's next on the scene? And what are we doing in the local economy to keep startups healthy, growing and staying local.

First off, at the 1 minute mark, Paul and John review the municipal election predictions made on the show (by John, Paul, Bernard von Schulmann and Michael Geoghegan), to see how surprisingly accurate some of them were. Bernard and Paul were the only two with a big miss on the big news of the night, Saanich Mayor and Victoria Mayor (Paul got both wrong).

At the 10:20 mark, the veil is lifted on Lisa Helps' campaign machine, as we begin our interview with Sonia Théroux, her campaign manager. Sonia gives us unique insider insights into the mechanics of the campaign, the so-called "Purple" coalition, the galvanizing effect of Lisa's personality, and the peculiar campaign dynamics which ultimately led to a 89 vote victory on election night.

We veer off into a thousand directions, talking about sorry state of political discourse, voter suppression, pantyhose and photographs with chickens.

This was one of the most interesting interviews we have had to date. We hope you love it too!

Welcome to the 25th episode of John, Paul and Mic. Yup, 25 episodes later, and we're still doing this thing. If you love us for real, send us a congratulations Tweet @JohnPaulandMic, and rate the show on iTunes.

In our local election campaign wrap-up, we talked about amalgamation (a lot), a vision for the City of Victoria, the motivations of young candidates and young voters, Justin Trudeau and marijuana (ya, we went there for some reason), interesting local races, local Green political influences, and a bunch of election night predictions ... most of which Paul will likely be on the wrong side of, sadly.

Fun Fact! Did you know that the megacities of Kelowna, Kamloops, Nanaimo and Port Alberni were all created through the terrifying amalgamation of smaller municipalities?

John also loses 10 points this week for declaring the word of the day, then not using it at all again during the entire show.